RUNOFF ELECTION: Growing Tea Party sway no shock locally

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Tom Green County Republicans were less surprised than many outside observers at Ted Cruz's upset victory in the primary runoff for the U.S. Senate nomination.

Russ Duerstine, the county GOP president, sees it partly as an outcome of the maturing influence of the tea party in Republican politics.

Cruz was the chosen candidate for the tea party, and his victory was an outcome of tea party grass-roots political organizing across the state.

Although Dewhurst still carried Tom Green County, his support was eroding significantly over time: In the May 29 primary, he took 61.5 percent of the vote; in early and absentee voting for the runoff that ended July 27, his support had dropped to 58.6 percent, and in the four days to the primary election, he dropped to barely more than half the Election Day vote — 50.53 percent.

"Just that one week, from early voting to Election Day, we noticed a huge difference," Duerstine said.

"It's very unusual to see more than 2 or 3 percent."

During that week, tea party activities in Tom Green County included a rally Sunday afternoon at a mobile phone bank in the form of a Tea Party Express recreational vehicle parked in the Big Lots parking lot at College Hills Boulevard and Loop 306. Local tea party chair Terry Campbell said 30 volunteers worked the phones for two hours, making 2,500 calls to local voters urging them to back Cruz.

Tea Party meetings recently have attracted attendance ranging from 75 to 300 people, growth that has forced the group to move out of the restaurants where it normally meets, Campbell said.

The group, in its fourth year, has leased a lecture room at the West Texas Training Center, where it holds monthly meetings. Campbell said the group heard from every candidate on the Republican roster except Cruz.

"The guy we liked the most was John Addison for Senate," Campbell said, but Addison got culled in the primary, and the state party's support went to Cruz.

Although Cruz never made it to San Angelo, Campbell said, his father, Rafael Cruz, came here three times to campaign for him.

"We got to known him quite well," Campbell said, adding that during his time in Florida he had heard of Rafael Cruz's battle against Fidel Castro. "He was a legend there," he said.

Dewhurst, he said, visited San Angelo four times.

The tea party has gradually insinuated itself into the local Republican machine, with five precinct chairs. At the Concho Valley Republican convention this year, a third or more of the 65 delegates were tea party members, Campbell said.

All the candidates they backed in the Republican primary and runoff won, Campbell said, except Greg Parker, who lost to Barry Smitherman for the Railroad Commission nomination — and even so, Parker polled more votes in Tom Green County.

Duerstine has watched the local tea party movement mature from a group that held occasional rallies to draw attention to social issues to a group that can put candidates in office.

"They're now far more organized in getting people to the polls to vote," he said. "It's more about voting than expressing public concerns."

Although many of the tea party members are new to political activism, they are part of a cycle with a history, Duerstine said.

"Philosophically, it's the same old problem the party has had ever since it became the majority party in Texas. These are folks for whom constitutional and social issues are more important than just getting a Republican elected," he said. "I've been living this since the 1990s."

In earlier times of Republican power, "it didn't used to matter whether you were a moderate or conservative," he said — it was a matter of getting a GOP candidate into office.

But for a lot of voters now, he said, it has become a matter of getting a conservative elected, and Cruz's election "will put more fuel in that fire."

Tom Green County was behind the curve of change this year, Duerstine said, with many older Republicans here supporting Dewhurst while younger, newer members in more populated areas swung the party toward Cruz.

"Demographically, Tom Green County is older than the eastern part of the state, but obviously a lot of minds were changed just since May 29 here, and that tells me there is some momentum in that part of the party," he said.

That momentum has the power to change things within the party, he said.

"A big part of the rise of the tea party is folks being dissatisfied with our party constantly caving in to the other side," he said. "When compromise is reached, we are the ones making concessions."

Other sources of unhappiness also have driven the movement.

"They saw an explosion of spending under a Republican president and congress, so it was really a revolt against the Republicans themselves," Duerstine said. "One philosophy will prevail over the other; that's how you get real working compromise."

Asked whether he thinks the inflexibility of tea party values will lead to further gridlock in government, Duerstine said, "No, I'm not concerned that the philosophical side will inhibit progress in D.C. Actually, I think it will help move the ball."

The Ted Cruz victory is a national milestone for the tea party, a Texas professor of politics said the day after the election.

Craig Goodman, assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston in Victoria, said it's the group's first clear big-state win.

"The tea party has inspired triumphs in relatively small states, but Texas has some of the most expensive media markets, it is a large and diverse state, and it is a big prize for the tea party," he said. "It shows you can be outspent but still win."

Other matters came into play, he said. The delay in the primaries far past the usual date caused by the redistricting dispute gave Cruz "a lot of valuable time" to organize his support, Goodman said.

Dewhurst then ran a weak campaign focused on attacking Cruz but failing to reach out to the grass-roots voters.

"It's a little surprising how flat-footed they were caught," he said. "It's surprising they didn't see it coming. Voters concluded Dewhurst was a moderate, somebody (who) was not interested in Republican politics."

Cruz, by contrast, "put together an attractive and coherent message, framing him as the conservative choice," he said.

The outcome, Goodman said, "sends a broader signal across the country, that there's a commitment to greater ideological purity rather than trying to reach across the aisle."

The effect, he said, can already be seen with the retirement announcements of some senators, such as Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and Nebraska's Ben Nelson, who have decided to leave the senate, despairing of getting anything accomplished because of increased partisanship.

"It's going to make it a lot harder to govern for the next couple of years," Goodman predicted.

Although the San Angelo tea party continues to focus energy on defeating the Democratic president — Campbell said they are "attacking issues, repealing Obamacare, the U.N. small arms treaty infringing on Second Amendment rights, the Agenda 21 fiasco" — the group also has internal targets in the GOP of interest.

"They're going to start listening, or we're going to start replacing them," he said. "There's a lot of deadwood in the Republican Party that needs to be pruned, to get it back to conservatives as used to be, but three or four years in Washington, they get corrupted. That's why we're in favor of term limits."